Watching the game. Making the stuffing. Carving the turkey. Eating until we’re stuffed.

Black Friday. Preparing for Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanza. Exchanging gifts. Being with loved ones.

Planning for New Year’s. The big night out or the big party. Resolutions, anyone?

It’s a time of social commitments, family gatherings, work parties. Lots of mingling.

And in the background, the deep freeze of winter hums. And during the longest nights of the year, we may even go dark on ourselves – in an effort to just try to get through it all.

But pause a minute.

Right now before it all starts, ask yourself:

• What do I really want from this time of year?
• Do I just want to get through it all?
• Or do I want something more?

Maybe there are a few people you really want to cherish, truly express gratitude. How might you do that? Through words, a card, a sharing of how you feel?

Or maybe showing up perfunctorily at Thanksgiving dinner is just fine. Tolerance is a virtue, is it not?

Maybe you want to expand love to others, get past your old resentments or functional ways.

What is the intention you bring to the holidays? Is it enough to just be grateful to be alive?

The holidays are a sort of birth canal. We get through it all and come out into the New Year. In a sense, we are all the Baby New Year.  Some of us come out, relieved, and others, saddened.

What if it was different this year? What if, instead, you brought conscious intention to it all? Do you have a story you need to challenge, of how things will be?

Consider the questions below.

• Will you buy gifts connected to your desire to give? Or a desire to check off tasks?
• Will New Year’s be meaningful or unconscious?

Now’s your chance before it all starts, to consider it.  It can be a tough time of year. Or a meaningful one. Ultimately, we decide.

This is self-relationship. Your true power.

Move into action and shoot me a quick email.

And if you’re more of a group guy, consider checking out the Men’s Relationship Tools where I am helping men step into action to enhance sex, passion, trust, and confidence in their relationship.

The post A Conscious Holiday appeared first on Stuart Motola.

Maybe you don’t speak a hard truth to your partner. Or maybe you don’t ask for what you need. Or maybe you don’t put the work you want to into your primary relationship (i.e. look at yourself, repair conflict, etc)

These are withholds — places where you keep yourself (well) withheld — compressed, falsely safe, checked out. 

When you’re in a withhold with your partner, they feel it. Your energy is small, contracted, not present. You’re less trustworthy because your dishonesty is in the room between you and them.

You’ve hidden your authentic best self from your partner. The relationship cruises along status quo highway in a fizzle.

In a relational withhold, we hide from a part of ourselves that we don’t want to deal with, a part we fear being seen. Below are two parts of myself that I track constantly.  I also call them characters.

Sometimes, I write to them by hand. Yeah, I know, weird, huh?  Not so much. When they’re in front of you, they can’t hijack your relationship. 

• Do either of these characters — The Controller or Caretaker — live in you?
• If not, who does – The Fixer, Abdicator, Blamer, Martyr, Child… ?
• What’s the cost of these characters running your relationship? Your life?
• How do they cause you to withhold?

Please comment below. Thanks.

Blessings,
Stu

The post 2 Characters Who Keep You Small appeared first on Stuart Motola.

We’re deeply connected.
We stay open to one another.
We never fight.

Notice the last statement. Do you know couples who never fight? Anyone come to mind? Likely not.

How about we change that last statement to “we navigate conflict well?” How does that change your perspective?

Conflict happens in all relationships. The biggest question is, how do we deal with it? What if the ideal relationship is not “conflict-free” but “conflict-resilient?” What does that look like?

It looks like this.

I trust you to stay in the fire with me when things get tough. I trust you to hold your own upset and speak your truth to me respectfully when you’ve cooled off. I trust you to hear my side of things.

Trust. Yes, conflict is all about trust. When we deal with conflict poorly, trust diminishes. When we navigate conflict well, trust increases. It’s that simple.

The real opportunity in conflict when navigated well is how you and your partner can feel closer than ever afterwards. To build confidence that you can deal with hard stuff, without attacking, blaming, checking out, or numbing. What would that be like?

As I said in my last blog — 4 Relational Conflict Styles – Which One Are You? – the ideal partner does not fix, blame, or abdicate. Instead, they take responsibility, deal with their hurt feelings and then focus on repair, not the damage.

Here’s a simple process to put repair into action.

But first, before I give you the goods, I want to say this. To repair after conflict, give up needing to be right. Give up having to prove anything.  Get over needing to be justified. That’s staying in the damage. That’s an adolescent perspective.

An adult, on the other hand, shows up fully to listen, hold their response, and hear their partner. That fosters connection and repair.

I once heard it said – In this life, do you want to be right or do you want to be loved?

So, here’s the short version of how to repair. This is a very simple process that has helped hundreds of individuals I’ve worked with who have stayed consistent with it.

Consistency is key. Once per week is best.

And if you prefer, get the more detailed version of the process now, which speaks to other things like common hooks, triggers, avoiding problem-solving, and a powerful closing step.

Here’s the simple version.

1. The first person speaking has the floor for 5 or 10 minutes, whatever is agreed on. Set a timer and use an object to show who has the floor. Only the person with the object may talk.

2. When the timer goes off, the person listening speaks back what they heard said, in their own words. No responding or reacting. Your only job is to show that you fully heard your partner.

3.  When you’re done, pause and take a breath. Switch who speaks and who listens.

This simple 20-30 minute process is so powerful because when you’ve clearly heard each other, the charge and emotions around the issue of conflict drops by upwards of 80%. You realize you didn’t need to be “right.” You just needed to be heard.

And because it’s so simple, there’s often a “holy crap, that’s it” feeling of relief afterwards.

Please note, doing this once might get you through a hiccup in your relationship. But consistency is the key to do conflict productively, deepen trust, and build a proven track record of getting through hard stuff together.

To bring that consistency to your relationship, I support individuals and couples to stay with the practice. To learn more, shoot me a quick email.

And again, get the more detailed version of the process now if you prefer.

The post Focus On The Repair, Not The Damage appeared first on Stuart Motola.

She says this. He says that. She gets angry. He gets pissed. Something hurtful is said somewhere along the way. Both of you are triggered and feel really unsafe.

Two individuals, supposedly together, spin down separate rabbit holes. Thoughts fly off the handle.

Do I have a future with this person?
Is this going to work?
How many times can we do this?

You leave the interaction, all worked up. Or maybe with a mutual decision to revisit it later. Regardless, an inner frequency screams, You’re not safe.

A few hours pass, or a day or two, before you connect with your partner again. What happens to you?

Do you badger yourself with questions like…
Why did I say that?
How can I make it better?
What can I do to make him (or her) love me again?
For reference sake, let’s call this person #1.

Or maybe you’re filled with blame and projection, thinking…
He always acts like that.
She wants too much from me.
She/he is so insecure.
We’ll call this person #2.

Or maybe you just shut it all out. F*#k it, I don’t want to deal with this shit. I’m going to have a drink.  Person #3.

Or you calm down and say to yourself, It’ll be okay. Give her/him some time.
Person #4.

Which one of the above are you?

Whichever you are, the common denominator is the opportunity to be with yourself in the aftermath. A chance to see how you hold yourself. How you are in healthy self-relationship or not.

And yet most people won’t go there — self-inquiry. They’ll  repeat the same patterns again and again, instead of doing the work of growth and change. But that’s not you or else you wouldn’t be reading this.

“The way out of a trap is to know the way the trap is built. Only then will it cease being a trap.”
― Marguerite Beecher, Beyond Success and Failure

Ok, what’s your trap?  Let’s unwind the dynamics above.

If you’re person #1, you want to make things better before you’ve even had a chance to be with yourself. You’re what’s called a Fixer or Rescuer. I know that path well and lived it for many years. I even wrote a book with Fixing You in the title.

As a Fixer, your job during and after conflict is to be with yourself. To self-regulate. Deep breaths. Meditation. Walks. Whatever it takes. Forget about your partner for a little bit. Reduce the energy put into thoughts of — Will she leave me? Will she still love me? How can I make it better?

Most of all, stop fixing your partner as a way of avoiding yourself. No more – if she’s ok, I can be ok. That’s called self-betrayal.  Instead, ask yourself — How can I be ok? How can I take care of myself? Time to be selfish.

If you’re person #2, you’re a blamer.  It’s all blame, shame, and projection. You’re essentially doing the same thing as person #1, but your target is your partner, instead of yourself. You don’t try to fix but you’re ready for war.

Like person #1, you’re not dealing with what’s inside of you – the hurt, the disappointment, the sadness. All you act on is the top emotion of anger. And yet underneath anger is sadness. Get to your sadness.

In blaming, you project the hurt you feel onto your partner as a way of not dealing with yourself. Maybe they did actually do something wrong or say something stupid or hurtful, how can you come to them with strength and compassion?

For both persons #1 and #2, it’s all about noticing what’s happening within you, the emotions you feel. This takes work. When the work is not done, outcomes include lifelong codependency, victim consciousness, adultery, drug addiction, violence, and worse.

Person #3 is an abdicator. He or she kicks the can down the road, checks out, and numbs. Again another way of not dealing with self and hard feelings. No good relational outcomes come for this person either.

Person #4 is actually the healthiest. He self-regulates by not freaking out. He understands that time heals and gives perspective. He cuts himself some slack. He gets out of his reptilian fight or flight system.

And yet, what is not stated for person #4 is responsible self-reflection. To ask — Did I contribute to the conflict? If so, how can I take responsibility for my part?

Person #4 is not the norm. To get to this place takes grit and perseverance — working your way out of the trap of reactivity, cultivating healthy self-relationship, and self-responsibility.

You do not project, blame, fix, or numb. Instead, you take responsibility and honor yourself and your partner. What’s that look like?

Learn more next week in a piece entitled, “Focus On The Repair, Not The Damage.”

The post 4 Relational Conflict Styles – Which One Are You ? appeared first on Stuart Motola.

A few people asked me, “Are you ok? I am here for you.”
Others said, “Thanks for sharing. This really helped me during a hard time.”
And some said, “You’re really brave.”

It touched me. And it got me wondering, why was a simple sharing of the heart so poignant for people? Is it uncommon in daily life? Are we so disconnected from our hearts?

In my experience, the answer is yes. And most challenging of all is when we hide our heart where it matters most – in our most intimate relationship with our primary partner.

We experience disconnection, loneliness, and a hunger for intimacy in relationship.

And yet when we open our heart, our partner opens to us. But we must have the courage to act first. Still, often we don’t.

We fear being seen, weak, vulnerable, and scariest of all, rejected. It happens when in response to sharing, we hear…

You’ll be fine, honey.
Just get over it.
It will pass.

Then, we feel even more alone. Did he even hear me? Does she care? We wonder. We feel invisible in a most tender and sensitive moment. It’s too much. It really hurts.

But I want to challenge you. So what if it hurts? Will it kill you? Is it worth keeping your heart locked up?

For some people, the answer is yes, without even knowing it; it’s unconscious.

We lock our hearts away to stay safe and ironically, it makes us less safe. And over time, we lose one another.

“There are parts of our personal story that are top secret. They are off limits; we do not dare reveal them to anyone.

“All this holding back makes us believe that our partner also has no further mysteries to reveal. At this point, Eros begins to recoil.”

-Prem Baba, “From Suffering to Joy: The Path of The Heart”

Eros, that exotic part of us that is deeply curious about our partner. When it’s gone, we suffer. Vital parts of us die. The spark of relationship simmers out.

Simply said, the locking up of one’s heart is a form of self-betrayal and self-abandonment. It’s as if you’re saying to yourself, I’m not worthy of being loved; not worthy of being seen; not worthy of connection.

So then, how do you keep your heart open in relationship?
Without the fear of burdening your partner?
Without the fear of being weak?

The answer has to do with you, more than your partner. And it looks like this… cultivate healthy self-relationship… experience your own heart.

Sit with the parts of you (fear, hope, loss, judgement, etc) that you resist sharing with your partner. Work with those parts. Connect with yourself.

As I said in my post last week, if I’m not connected to me, I can’t be connected to you. It’s that simple.

Healthy self-relationship is the foundation for a heartfelt, energized, and fulfilling partner relationship. When we practice it, we learn to open our heart to our self and our partner – without fear of judgment.

When you commit to being in healthy self-relationship, you’re saying, Self meet self. We’re in this for the long haul. We better get to know each other. 

It empowers you to approach your beloved in a responsible way – with a tender heart, stripped of projection or blame, and a courageous sense of vulnerability.

“Babe, I’ve been in a lot of fear lately. I want to talk with you. And yet I’m afraid you might not be open to hearing me. Can I share what’s been going on with me?

“I feel like we’ve been losing one another lately. I want to feel closer to you.”

Notice all the “I” statements. Very few “you” statements or accusations.

Self-responsibility is sexy. You’re in your sovereign, building integrity with your desires and needs – and creating authentic, empowered, and energized relationship with your partner.

And your partner feels it. She or he can relax, feel connected to you, and trust you to stay connected, even when you disconnect from yourself.

The post Hiding Hard Feelings & How It Affects Your Relationship appeared first on Stuart Motola.

It doesn’t matter. You’re human. You do this thing – we all do – but nobody talks about it. And it’s the #1 way we screw up our relationships.

Why doesn’t anyone talk about it?

Well, it would likely be SEEN as bad news. We, humans, prefer good news – Hollywood endings, love, wealth, potential.

But we don’t realize that to get to the good stuff, we need to clear out the bad underneath. 

We can’t just toss a bunch of good on top of bad and expect all to be well.  Sure, it could work for a while but eventually the bottom falls out.

Ok, so what is this thing we do to mess up our relationships?

Simply put, it is unconscious self-betrayal. And it dishonors you and your partner.

We do it when we’re run by our fear of security. We do it when we fear losing our relationship.

When we’re afraid to speak our truth. When we don’t communicate.

It’s primal. It’s in our DNA. But it doesn’t have to be.

CHECK OUT my recent appearance below on the “Believe Be Real Be Bold” Podcast with Dave Glaser to learn more.

If you like the podcast, reply “self-betrayal no more” to get details about my upcoming 4 week course – “From Self Mastery to Relational Mastery.”

In this course, you’ll learn how self-relationship is the key to an amazing partnership.

Dig it? Remember... it's only fair to share.

The post The #1 Way We Mess Up Our Relationships appeared first on Stuart Motola.

He listens, scanning stock prices on his phone.

“Did you hear me?” she says.

“I’m listening. I’m listening,” he says.

“Can I have five minutes without the phone?”

“What! What’s going on?” He can tell he’s failed her in some way. He continues scanning his phone.

“Is now a good time to talk?” she says.

“No, but…”

“Then let’s talk later,” she says.

“Now you got me going. You’re going to leave me hanging? What’s up?”

“You didn’t hear the first thing I said, did you?”

He shakes his head. “What did you say?” Again, his failure as a man to listen. Oh well, he thinks.

“Can you put your phone on airplane mode for five minutes, if we’re going to talk?”

“Ok, ok.” He puts his phone aside. “So, what’s up?”

“I feel like we’ve been very disconnected lately. You’ve been super busy at work. I’ve been preoccupied with my big exhibition.

“It’s as if we’re losing each other. I want to be more connected with you. The way it’s been lately… it’s as if we’re not even in a relationship. It’s as if we are strangers cohabitating. And then I begin to wonder, what’s the point?

“I want us to make an effort to spend more time together.”

His mind starts racing, defending. He feels attacked.

What the hell? She knows I have no time now. Why is she so needy?  

He’s not even sure what that she wants. But it feels like it’s not who he is.

It’s like she wants him to be one of her girlfriends. To listen to all her talk about her emotional state and her feelings. He often feels overwhelmed by this.

His male brain works in fewer words. His male heart struggles when he feels her challenge him. It’s as if he’s failed her. She’s not happy.

He wonders, is it me or just who she is?

If it’s him, he feels his failure. If it’s who she is, he just wants to run.

His rational – transactional mind commands him. It’s how he lives his life.

• Broken car, fix it.
• Erroneous credit card charge, reverse it.
• Engineering challenge, get it right.

While the world rewards him for this, a different set of skills is needed with his beloved. And it challenges everything at his core about being a man.

It refutes his identity of fixing things, of getting things right, and his perception of his strength as a man. He feels as if he has to give up who he is to make her happy.

What’s needed feels feminine. But it’s not. It’s simply human.

And then, he pauses.  He takes a breath — into his heart and out of his mind. He remembers this trick from working with me. “The Sacred Pause” – we call it.

He hasn’t been listening to her. He’s been stuck in a response. She said she wants to spend more time with him. He sees that.

He breathes into his feeling body. And leaves his reactive self. He connects with his emotional state. And feels sad about her sadness.

He remembers something I said to him once – A person not connected to his heart has no compass.

Breathe, listen, and let go, he says to himself.

Connected to his sadness, he breathes again. She really does love me, he thinks. She not only wants more from me, but she wants more of me.  He smiles.

He remembers to let go. He detaches from his immediate reactions.

From there, he realizes, it’s not about him. It’s about her. She’s having the challenges. Not him. He relaxes even more. His compassion grows. He appreciates her speaking her truth.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, smiling. “Thank you for letting me know that you want to spend more time with me. I know it’s been hard lately.  I want more time with you too.”

“You do?” she says. Everything softens in her. Her smile grows, as does his.

He is a powerful man, strong in heart, big in capacity.  One who can hold her desires without cracking. One who can see her when she can’t see herself.

And she does the same for him. This is an empowered couple.

Become a relational samurai. In 4 weeks, I’ll show you how. Just say “Relational Samurai” to get details.

The post When She Challenges Everything He Knows About Being A Man appeared first on Stuart Motola.

She says nothing. Her green eyes meet his hazel.

“Are you happy to hear that? Or is it a burden to you?” he says.

Still, she says nothing. Merely holds his gaze.

He likes that she does not respond.

Do I say this because it’s true? Or what I think you want to hear? He wonders to himself.

In her silence, he feels a sweet tension. She feels no need to validate or invalidate him. It gives him space to consider why he asks these questions.

“You make me a bigger me,” he says.

“I am just a mirror,” she says.

“And you see me so fully,” he adds.

“As you see me,” she says.

They smile at one another.

To be seen completely by one’s beloved is the greatest gift of relationship. In being seen, we are expanded. We are a bigger self. We are richer, fuller, happier. Making for a bigger us.

But to see one another so fully, we must first see ourselves.  And yet often we outsource this to our beloved in the spell of “in-loveness.”

The resultant script is — If he does not see me fully, I don’t know who I am. This is a big problem.

A couple can see one another fully when each person knows who they are. Each lives in their sovereignty — which means to be connected, in integrity, with one’s own authentic identity, needs, and desires.

And yes, this takes work, growth, and life experience.

From this foundation of self-trust and self-knowing, two individuals can grow bigger together.

But often this does not happen in western culture. Without sovereign teachings as a society, we typically must first feel the consequences of the sovereign’s opposite.

This opposite looks like a parent-child dynamic. Love and fill me so that I don’t have to deal with what I don’t like in myself.

And this is an impossible task — to fill another. A cruel unconscious burden on any relationship.  A neurotic clinging to the other.

The minute we cling to us, attach too much to we, it disappears, as if it never existed. As if we are alone. It seems cruel. But biology has us wired this way.

I believe it is a defense against narcissism, a bulwark in service to humility, an invitation into mature self-knowing. We must see ourselves fully, flaws and strengths, to see our beloved.

And in this way, we avoid the trap of — Fill me and I can hate you when you fail.

The key to mastery in relationship begins with two people who are in healthy sovereign self-relationship.

When this happens, we no longer, as a couple, seek to validate or invalidate the other. We are merely with one another – bigger, fuller, wiser. Together or apart, in any moment.  We may feel validation or we may not, but we don’t hold onto it as our whole self.

I love you means I love who I am with you. And with or without you, I am still me. And you are still you.

With you, I am bigger, fuller, more expanded than I am alone. But without you, I will be ok, even though I may “feel like I am going to die.” But I will live.

I can feel heartbreak. In fact, it is a great friend that brings me closer to me. But I don’t seek it.

And so my teachings begin with self-mastery. “From Self Mastery to Relationship Mastery” is my first new offering in over a year.

Starting this September, four weeks of powerful intensive training to master self-relationship from which to create fulfilling partnership.

To be the first to learn more, say “master-relationship.”

The post With You, I See Me appeared first on Stuart Motola.

“I hit the jackpot with you, baby,” she says.

She says big things like this to me often.

“I just want you to be you!”

Bam! That’s what I want – to be me.

Before I really knew her, before I trusted that she wasn’t just a big-word person, I was reluctant to fully take in her expression.

That’s just how she talks, I thought.

Yet I also felt wisdom in her. The feminine wisdom of deep trust. In me, she had found what she wanted in a man.

Someone strong. Someone kind. Someone loving. Someone unhinged by fear. And someone vulnerable. Her words, not mine.

And so, I take a breath. I feel the truth of her words. And it’s true. I am the jackpot. And so is she. It takes jackpot to see jackpot.

We’ve only been together a few months. And so it’s big for me to introduce her into my writing so soon — with her permission, of course.

But I’ve been leaping with her since our first coffee date, when I wondered if I felt much energy with her.

Any doubts were quelled on our second date at an elegant Italian restaurant, after which I pinned her against the hood of her car.

Together, in a short time, we traversed landscapes that in the past would have taken years to move through – an ex-girlfriend, a transaction with my ex-wife, the truth of my not being ready to parent kids again, and a physical incongruence that had her walk out of my life late one night.

She came back.

This chick is a bad ass, I thought. She does not run from hard things. She won my heart then.

And through challenges, we’ve remained open, to one another, to feeling pain, to feeling joy, to trusting our being together without attachment to outcome, merely calling in and being the loving human beings we are.

And that’s it. It’s not about gaga-eyed love, although we have that. It’s not about not being able to be apart.

It’s actually about being able to be apart. Trusting our connection. Trusting who we are as individuals in the world, to do conflict and repair, to do sweet and hard truths, to do this life, together and apart.

Before we met, I thought I knew all that I wanted from relationship. I did not know I also wanted something else. Something she taught me. Something at age fifty, after a twenty year marriage, I had forgotten was possible in partnership.

Something akin to unconditional love. But not quite that. After all, all love has conditions. If I were to start drinking incessantly, I wouldn’t expect our love to stay strong.

It’s something else. Something more vast. Something not Hollywood.

Something more akin to a deep trust, a deep knowing, a deep resting into one another. The kind of rest you feel after a life’s work of striving to become who you seek to be, and then being fully seen for it.

When she sees parts of me that I can’t see, when she sees strength in me that I didn’t know I had, my world expands and glows. Not merely because she sees me, but because she sees what I know is already in me.

She sees me like an eternal friend would. And I take that into my world, with and away from her.

This is not the myth of “she completes me.” It is something bigger, more universal, more of the world, not just about us. Something aligned with the sweet truth of mature adult love.

We are not the sum of each other’s world. We are not everything to one another. And we know from life experience, pretending otherwise would be a cruel burden.

We seek to bring our love into the world in who we are and all that we do.

She says, “It took a lifetime to find you, baby!”

“Me too, darling!” I smile.

Our story is far from complete. And while we’ve quickly built a foundation for the long game, we’ve lived long enough to know that the moment is everything.

Get help with your relationship now!

The post Getting Personal: A Love Letter To My Beloved appeared first on Stuart Motola.

See me. Hear me. Show me that I matter.

Touch me.  Feel me. Tell me that I am not invisible.

Hold me.  Make me safe. Don’t let me go.

I will use all my charms to woo you. My Lover. My Charmer. My Intoxicator. To “make” you fall in love with me.

And if you don’t, I fear I will not know who I am.  “Who would I be…?”

My identity. Defining through you. Merging with you.

Without you…
… I am a lesser me.
… I am incomplete.
… I might die.

Entanglement. Enmeshment. Why does it happen?

Are we biologically wired for love? Or culturally programmed for neurosis and codependency?

The answer is both.

What we experience as a wiring for love – the desire to connect, to be seen, heard, and witnessed – is real.  But how we act is often culturally programmed (Hollywood, Disney) and happens in a messy way, mired in self-betrayal and neurosis.

We lose ourselves in each other. Seeking to be completed. Hoping to be filled in. And when the spell subsides, we resent the other.

Fill my emptiness and then I can hate you when you fail.**

Why do we try to fill the void through another? And more importantly, how do we know when we’re doing it?

Simply put, we know it when we’ve lost relationship with our self. We abandon intra-personal love for inter-personal love. Intra meaning the love within. Inter between self and other.

We forget our self, diminish our self. We make meaning of who we are through the other.

We become like a child. The child we once were, who had not yet formed a healthy ego or self.

What’s it mean for the adult to be in charge?

The adult feels love’s hunger but does not co-opt it for his or her identity. The adult feels the emptiness but does not seek to fill it.

The adult soothes the fearful, anxious child. And seeks love not to lose self but instead to expand self.

And in between the joy and giddiness of love, there is space for relationship with self, sovereignty, dignity, and fearlessness.

I will not define myself through you.
And I will enter you absolutely.

I will hold you.
And I will let you go.

I will pull you in.
And I will push you out.

I will hear you out.
And I will shut you down.

I will make love to you.
And I will take space.

I will merge with you.
And I will separate.

I will stay in relationship with me.
And stay in relationship with you.

I will make meaning of my life with you, not through you.

Want more? Get it now.

Like my coaching page and/or have this weekly blog delivered directly to your inbox (includes 1st chapter of my book “Fixing You Is Killing Me.”)

*Melissa Broder (“Life Without Longing,” NY Times, Feb 9, 2019)  

The post How We Use Falling In Love To Make Meaning of Life appeared first on Stuart Motola.